Sign the petition to save the Children’s centres

Hannah left a comment on this blog which really deserves more prominence. So here we go. Please sign it and forward it:

We have started a petition against the cuts. Please visit this website and take a stand –

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/save-haringey-childrens-centres-petition-to-rt-hon-michael-gove-mp/

My blogging reputation in tatters – oh dear !

Oh dear, oh dear…I have just logged on to the blog. The first time in about four months and …shock horror…people are STILL looking at it…Oh dear.

Apologies to anyone who wanted to read one of my famous rants and couldn’t find one.

It was partly my mistake as I went to a public meeting on the NHS in Crouch End on Tuesday and …as you would expect me to …asked a question from the floor about what advice the panel could give to parents who are concerned about aspects of the NHS reform and of course identified myself as Whittington Mum.

Next thing I know is I get lots of hits on my blog which hasn’t been updated since January…oh dear…there goes my reputation as a blogger….

What’s my excuse? it was a lot easier to blog when I didn’t have a child and wasn’t working pretty much full time.

The reason this blog is neglected isn’t because there aren’t LOTS of things to speak out about. The reasons are:

1) I am juggling a million balls at once at the moment and sadly this blog is the least important of the balls – so it gets dropped pretty much all the time

2) The scale and the force of the cuts is so overwhelming that it is difficult to keep up with this pace

3) I spend my working hours campaigning for a better health service

So many apologies to all. I can’t even promise it’s going to get better. But I will keep at it if and when I can….so please keep checking back….

Ham & High article and mumsnet update about the cuts

There’s a good summary of the newly announced cuts in the Ham & High. Apparently Early Years and Children’s Centre face a cut of 6.5 million. Great.

Click here to read the article. But let me warn you it makes very depressing reading.

And Mrs Baldwin has posted an update on mumsnet regarding the children’s Centres and nurseries. Click here for more info

So – it’s all happening but we don’t know exactly what. And Mrsbaldwin seems to suggest that all children’s centres will stay open..well …forgive my scepticism – I believe it when I see it.

They probably stay open if we run them ourselves in the spirit of the Big Society. Yay ! Anyone fancies running a play session in their local children’s centre after work ? I am free between 8 pm and 9pm on monday evenings. You don’t mind that I collapse with exhaustion while I am minding your children, do you?

The cuts are coming to a children’s centre near you…

Guys – I’m exhausted. Motherhood and working life does not leave me with much time/energy/desire to blog or monitor the cuts. It’s all so depressing.

But just to let you know that Mrs Baldwin has done a stirling job and dug up some info regarding Haringey Children’s Centres and posted it on mumsnet.

Here’s what she said:

“LB Haringey published their budget proposals yesterday, here:
www.minutes.haringey.gov.uk/mgConvert2PDF.aspx?ID= 19577

Item 61 says:
“Early Years and Childcare – This currently enables us to support and deliver 18 children’s centres and our statutory obligations regarding quality and access. The children’s centre programme, management , administration and commissioning of services will be reduced and services targeted to the most vulnerable families. The Family Information Service will also be integrated into the new early years structure.

“This will result in a reduction to the number of centres designated as providing the core children’s centre offer; those that are resourced to provide the full core offer will be targeted at those areas of most need in line with the original programme intentions.”

There are also some numbers:
In £’000s
2011/12 – £5236
2112/13 – £1, 283
No figure at all in the 2013/14 column

This may mean a huge drop in funding and various closures, redundancies etc between 2011 and 2012, although I need to check I have understood the spreadsheet right.

I am planning to ask the Council this week what they think all this will mean in practice and will post anything interesting here” [on mumsnet]

This blog is on fire

Check this out:

The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads This blog is on fire!.

Well a quick pad on the back for me before I am on to my next (depressing) blog entry…

Keep Haringey Breastfeeding Campaign – the latest

Quite a few people have typed into their search engines updates about the Haringey Breastfeeding Campaign and arrived at this blog. Apologies for everyone who could not find the info they were looking for.

Click on this link for the latest article on the campaign.

As far as I am concerned there are two big scandals here:

1) the huge differences in breastfeeding rates between the east and west of the borough (see above article for details) St. Anns – 26.7% vs Highgate – 64.3%(shocking, ey?)

2) The fact that the Haringey PCT board accepted the recommendation that a specialist would lead to the universal health staff to be de-skilled on the basis of anecdotal evidence.

Frankly, basing decisions on anecdotal evidence is not good enough. Sheena Carr, the author of the Haringey breastfeeding review finally promised – after we challenged her repeatedly – to find the evidence to back up her recommendation which has already been rubber stamped by the PCT board.

Two weeks on we’re still waiting for her to come back to us with the promised evidence. I have suggested that she should also present a summary of evidence in support of a breastfeeding specialist so the whole process of adopting the recommendations of the Haringey Breastfeeding Review (some of them are very good) does not descend into a total farce.

We’re waiting to hear back from Sheena.

You can read the text of our deputation to Haringey PCT board on Sarah Cope’s blog (but please don’t buy into the alarmist “Don’t get sick in Haringey” stuff in the rest of the article – while things might not be looking great you can still get most of the health treatment you need – so don’t worry yourself sick 🙂

I can’t keep quiet

I know I said I was logging off and I don’t really have much time to blog  but I just can’t keep quiet. The student protests and the associated violence, the vote to triple tuition fees and of course the fact that our very own (MP) Lynne Featherstone, the right honourable member for Hornsey and Wood Green broke her pre-election pledge to us and voted FOR a tripling of tuition fees is simply too much for me to take in silence.

So I’m back and I will have the odd rant on this blog. I must admit I am not sure what exactly can be done but I might figure it out as I blog along. If not maybe all blogging will achive is to stop me from developing stomach ulcers. I hope something good will come of it.

Re-opening this blog is another one of my spur of the moment decisions. I was inspired by watching this video.

As the Metropolitian police has successfully deterred me from taking to the streets  to make my voice heard- I’m not letting neither my six months old nor myself being charged by a horse or hit over the head with their police batons – blogging seems a safe alternative for a young mother who is worried about the future of her child and his generation.

And for all those of you who want to get involved I’d like to suggest the Haringey Alliance for Public Services as a good place to start.

Whittington Mum is logging off….

yes…it is sad but true. I have started a new full-time job two weeks ago and job AND baby AND blogging is simply too much for me. So something’s gotta go and I am afraid it’s this blog.

But don’t despair there’s good news pretty much all round:

• the A&E and the maternity unit of the Whittington hospital is still around and will be for a while or possibly even for many more hundreds of years
• there are many brilliant mothers and fathers campaigning hard to “Keep Haringey breastfeeding” and will continue to do so until the campaign is won
• I’ve got an exciting new job setting up a network of parents across the Uk to campaign for better quality health care

What can I say – I will miss this blog. I started it on the spur of the moment back in February and had no idea that it would serve so many purposes: saving the Whittington, keeping my friends informed wether or not I was in labour yet, helping me to work through the pretty traumatic birth experience and help to build a completely new campaign to keep Haringey breastfeeding.

It has also made me into a minor local celebrity. I’ve been courted by almost all local political parties (except the Conservatives) before the election, received (undeserved) praise from a number of other mums when they found out that I was Whittington Mum and even the midwife who delivered my son exclaimed when my husband mention it: “No! She is Whittington Mum?!? I imagined her to be completely different!” I never found out if she meant different in a good or bad way 🙂

It’s been a pleasure. Thank you for reading.

Keep Haringey Breastfeeding ! You go girls ! (and boys)

There have been some great developments on the “Keep Haringey Breastfeeding” front.

Firstly, I received a letter from my MP Lynne Featherstone. She had received a letter from Tracey Baldwin, Chief Executive of Haringey Primary Care Trust and wait for it…there will soon be a breastfeeding support group in Wood Green (in Noel Park children’s Centre). Yay – just as so many mothers in Wood Green wanted.

Secondly, we wrote a letter to Tracey Baldwin highlighting that service users need to be adequately consulted in the review on breastfeeding support in Haringey, they have promised to conduct. Now mothers from the Keep  Breastfeeding Campaign will have a meeting at Haringey Primary Care Trust next week to discuss the issue.

And lastly, our campaign has had national media coverage in the Daily Mail – would you believe it. The reason why is quite sad though. One of our mothers was told to “face the wall” in St. Ann’s library while breastfeeding her eight-week old baby. Ridiculous ! Read it here. Apparently Haringey Council wants the libraries to be places where mothers can feel comfortable to breastfeed. Well, I guess they need to try harder. 

To keep up to date with the campaign please, please join us on facebook. And I am sure Sarah Cope will blog updates.

What’s happening with the Whittington?

I’ve been very busy lately so did not have much time for blogging. Will explain why in a minute.

About two weeks ago Jeremy Corbyn called a public meeting about the Whittington. As I have a four-months old baby – whom I still partially breastfeed – I’m not going anywhere much in the evening so I didn’t attend.

However I have been told that “Stephen Conroy [Communications Director of NHS North Central London] made it clear that the seven proposals will be scrapped, likewise the proposed reconfiguration of services. However he did then say that they would be looking at each individual service to see if reconfiguration etc is needed.”

It’s good news to scrap the ridiculous proposals as they simply weren’t based on any evidence. But they still might end up wanting to close the Whittington if they draw up new reconfiguration plans. NHS North Central London will need to hurry though as they will soon be scrapped along with all other Strategic Health Authorities under the new plans for the NHS put forward by the Coalition Government.

It’s very much “keep calm and carry on” for now. I know that quite a few people will be watching the Whittington situation very, very closely and will make the appropriate noise if there is a new threat. Sadly, I can’t promise you I’ll be reporting about it.  But I am sure the local media, such as Ham&High and the Islington Tribune will.

The Defend the Whittington Coalition will probably issue a few more calls for protests, as they did over the summer. I don’t think more protests are the best way forward at this point in time to save the Whittington. So my advice would be to save the marching for when we really need it.